I’m going to start designing more stuff for 3D printing soon. Here’s one of my existing products. For use with 1:32nd scale/54mm figures, they bring an extra range of gestures to your models.
- Category Archives 3d printing
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Machined bullets for 3D-printed guns could make them practical weapons
3D printed guns have had one major drawback- the materials they’re made from don’t hold up well to the stresses created by an exploding bullet. The plastic cracks and the barrel or receiver becomes useless quickly. One developer has found a way around this by machining thick walled shells with the bullet an inch or so inside them, which act as little barrels to contain the explosive force. They have to be machined individually, but the raw material is cheap and they can be reloaded after use.
Bullet could make 3D-printed guns practical deadly weapons (Wired UK).
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3D printed drones
Need a cheap drone for a mission tomorrow? Just print one out.
We have 3D printed keys, guns and shoes — now a research team at the University of Virginia has created a 3D printed UAV drone for the Department of Defense.
In the works for three years, the aircraft, no bigger than a remote-controlled plane, can carry a 1.5-pound payload. If it crashes or needs a design tweak for a new mission, another one can be printed out in a little more than a day, for just $2,500 (£1533). It’s made with off-the-shelf parts and has an Android phone for a brain.
via Military-grade drones can now be 3D printed (Wired UK).
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Perfectly modern sex toys
Just over a decade ago, I polled the Spinneyhead extended family and we came up with a list of features to build into the perfect sex toy. I never got around to creating said toy (or toys, some of the features were mutually exclusive), but a surprising number of the suggestions have been incorporated into toys which are now available, such as this high-tech selection that Wired has had a look at.
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Build yourself a house with mini-bots
There have been other robots designed to 3D print buildings, but they’ve all had to be bigger than the final structure. These mini-bots- and their mobile supply trolley- aren’t restricted in the same way. They’re more likely to be building sturdier temporary structures at first. I could see rescue teams turning up at the site of a large disaster and using these sorts of robots to put a hospital up within a few days, for instance.
These Cute Little Drones Could 3-D Print a House | Design | WIRED.
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The evolution of 3D guns
3D printed weapons are a scary prospect, and their development from idea to prototype to ever better versions has been typically fast. I was a relatively early advocate of the power of 3D printing, but even I wouldn’t have predicted practical firearms becoming a possibility so quickly.
How 3-D Printed Guns Evolved Into Serious Weapons in Just One Year | Threat Level | WIRED.
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Christmas gift ideas from Spinneyhead
Not long to go until Christmas, so, if you’re unsure about what to get your friends and family, may I suggest a couple of online shops.
Buy my handmade, art and vintage stuff from Zibbet, or get 3D printed models from Shapeways. All cool stuff, some of it using the most modern of methods, some old school.
And don’t forget, if you have a Kindle you can buy my books from Amazon (and Garth Owen’s as well).
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3D printed N gauge bus shelters and OO gauge bikes now available through Shapeways
I’ve been working away on some 3D stuff, and you can now order N gauge (1:148 scale) bus shelters and OO gauge bikes and more from Shapeways.
There should be more new designs going up in the next few weeks.
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Greater Manchester Police seize 3D printer used to make guns in raids, as well as crack cocaine, £2m of counterfeit goods, lethal weapons and high-powered cars – Manchester Evening News
Component parts of what could be the UK’s first-ever 3D gun were seized in Greater Manchester’s biggest-ever crackdown on gangs.
Police and other agencies have been involved in around 100 raids during a week of hush-hush operations, with more expected this morning. Fifty people have been arrested so far.
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3-D scans turn fossils into print replicas
Nearly 20,000 fossils in Britain have been scanned and uploaded onto the Web, allowing the public to download them and print intricate replicas.
Thousands of prehistoric fossils have been rescued from dusty museum archives and made available online by the British Geological Survey as highly detailed 3-D models.
Researchers and the public can now access almost 20,000 virtual fossils and print 3-D replicas. There are also plans in the works to digitally scan dinosaur fossils.
The blog of the 3D fossil project is here.
via 3-D scans turn fossils into print replicas.
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Look at my Tiny Chopper!
Based upon a popular child’s bike, these little beauties will bring life and colour to any modern image layout set in the seventies and later.
The bikes frames are 3D printed and come unpainted with a section of bent wire for the handlebars- trim the bars to the appropriate length and attach them with super glue. (The handlebars supplied will be in silver, not, as seen in the photo, black.)
The OO Gauge Chopper 2 pack is available to order from Spinneyworld.
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Look at my little Chopper
I just built up one of the O gauge 3D printed chopper bikes that arrived last week. Not bad.
You can order yours from the Spinneyworld shop.
(There are also OO gauge bikes, which are even smaller and more fiddly. I’m in the process of building one of those as well.)
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Little pieces of plastic that make me very happy
These arrived today, and I am very pleased with them. They’re the latest test prints of my first set of modern image bikes for model railways. The larger bikes are O gauge (1:43rd), and look to be ready for market. You can order them from the Spinneyworld shop, with the first full scale print late this month or early next.
The smaller bikes are OO (1:76th). At that size, the handle bars and pedals were too fine to print (I had to fatten them up for the O gauge ones). The question is, would people buy them if they need to fashion their own handle bars? I could make them in etched brass, but that could be expensive, or make them from wire, a little labour intensive. But I’m selling to resourceful folk, maybe I can rely on them to do a bit of the work.
Modellers, what do you think?
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3D printing is the future!!!!
I’m sure downloadable and customisable were amongst the requirements for the Perfect Sex Toy project. Not so sure about the acetone vapour bath, though.
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Hi-fi, Lo-fi, high-tech, low-temp
3D printed records-
The Aphex Twin sounded about right. There’s information about the process here.
(via readwrite.com)
Records made of ice-
(via BoingBoing)
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Buy my benches
1:76th Park Bench
4 simple modern park benches. Each has a mounting peg in one leg to secure them to baseboard.
This is a test of embedding buy buttons for Shapeways printed items.
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Personal portable 3D printer
The UP printer is another 3D printer designed for home and hobby use. $1500 for the little machine and $50/kg for the material it uses may seem steep, but I reckon it’s comparable to early laser printers. One day I’ll have my own 3D printer.
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I wish I’d thought of that- the Road Popper
Available through Shapeways, the Road Popper is a stainless steel bottle opener which mounts on the rails of your saddle. Neat.
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Bits From Bytes
Bits From Bytes is a British company which makes desktop 3D printers with prices starting under £2000. That’s for the single head version of their printer. Realistically, and especially if you want to creat more complex structures, you really need the two head version, which will also lay down support material. I’m not sure what the three head printer will do. They also make a build it yourself version if you’re feeling adventurous.